Schwarzenegger Urged to Sign, Veto Same-Sex Marriage Bill CNS News The California Legislature on Tuesday became the first in the nation to pass a bill allowing same-sex, civil marriages. The legislation, AB 849, deletes "a man and a woman" from California marriage law, replacing that phrase with "two persons"...Even if Schwarzenegger signs the bill, CCF said there's a good chance that it will be

What Really Happened in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina? by Bill O'Reilly ...Instead, Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin decided to allow New Orleans residents to stay if they wanted, even though a mandatory evacuation order had been issued by the mayor about 14 hours before the storm hit. Nagin did authorize transportation to get folks to the Superdome, which was designated a refuge of

Iraq, Vietnam and the American soldier by Abraham Sisson ...This begs an obvious question: if we have not a drafted, but an all-volunteer army, then why are anti-war protestors so eager to claim that they 'support' our troops? Feel free to call them boys shipped off to Iraq by a war-mongering, money grubbing president, but the truth is that these men and women made a conscious choice to enlist in

The Undoing of America By Frank J. Gaffney Jr. The U.S. Senate is scheduled tomorrow to decide whether to clear the way for the most odious, anti-American piece of legislation in memory: S. 147, the "Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act." Incredibly, as of now, more than 61 senators are expected to vote to begin a process that would ineluctably unravel the United States as a nation...

John Roberts, Minimalist by Cass Sunstein Some conservative judges are minimalists, others fundamentalists, and there is a huge difference between the types. Unless we appreciate that difference, we will never be able to understand the debate over the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court...

What Kind of New Orleans Will Be Rebuilt? by Michael Barone ...New Orleans' heritages of upper-class complaisance and political corruption -- the result of the city's French tradition -- work against a more broadly based commercial and economic revival. Without changes in these attitudes, historic New Orleans may revive, but the city will become little more than a theme park, like Venice, and

“With His Boots On” by Wendy Long ...how wonderful it was that the justices could engage in sharp constitutional debates while still maintaining civility and real friendship, largely because the chief's example reminded them that they were part of an institution of American government much greater than themselves...Chief Justice Rehnquist led the Court back toward a proper respect for the role of

Family Court Ruling Wounds National Guardsman in the Heart by Phyllis Schlafly ...Since McNeilly's case was reported in the press, Erb's lawyer and the court's representative are trying to claim that depriving him of his father's rights wasn't because he was serving in Iraq, but because of his poor parenting skills. The proof? McNeilly sent a couple of postcards to his son that showed soldiers

French Quarter Holdouts Create 'Tribes' by Allen G. Breed In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming "tribes" and dividing up the labor. As some went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect property. In a bar, a bartender put near-perfect stitches into the torn ear of a robbery victim.

Beyond the News: Weekend Journal Hugh Hewitt, Colonel Austin Bay and Albert Mohler tackle the Iraqi Constitution and Richard Land and David Limbaugh weigh in on Christian persecution.

The Challenge of Post-Katrina Rocky Mountain News ...It's not as if Bush was insensible to the crisis as it unfolded. It is largely forgotten now, but the president declared an emergency for four Gulf Coast states on Sunday before the storm hit - an extraordinary action...But he was slow getting back to Washington after the event...If anything, the performance of some state and local officials -

New Orleans, the Tragedy by Thomas Lifson ...When I pressed my oilman informant for the reason Houston prevailed, he gave me a look of pity for my naiveté, and said, “Corruption.” Anyone making a fortune in New Orleans based on access to any kind of public resources would find himself coping with all sorts of hands extended for palm-greasing. Permits, taxes, fees, and outright bribes would be a

Bureaucratic Failure by Daniel Henninger ...So if we're so smart, why are Louisiana and Mississippi sinking beneath water and red tape?...We fail to use well what we know because we rely too much on large public bureaucracies. This was the primary lesson of the 9/11 Commission Report. Large public bureaucracies, whether the FBI and the CIA or FEMA and the Corps of Engineers, don't talk to each

A Descent Into Indecency by Tunku Varadarajan ...There has been a descent so clear into indecency that one must address it as pressingly as the breakdown of the city's levees. It is as if the moral and civic "levees," too, were overwhelmed by the torrent. Once the waters have receded, New Orleans will face a task that will test our national mettle. A part of that task will be to ask why so many

Ben Franklin Had the Right Idea for New Orleans by John Tierney Why is New Orleans in so much worse shape today than New York City was after the attacks on Sept. 11? The short answer is that New York was attacked by fire, not water. But then why are urbanites so much better prepared to cope with fire than with flooding? Mostly because they learned to fight fire without any help from the Army Corps

Gas Price Surge No Conspiracy The Arizona Republic It is one thing to witness the destruction of a major portion of U.S. fuel-production infrastructure by Hurricane Katrina and conclude, logically, that the storm's effects are going to hit consumers at the gas pump sooner or later. It is another matter entirely to see gas-pump prices leap 30 to 50 cents per gallon overnight, almost before the

Politicians Failed Storm Victims by Ron Fournier ...There's plenty of blame to go around - the White House, Congress, federal agencies, local governments, police and even residents of the Gulf Coast who refused orders to evacuate. But all the finger-pointing misses the point: Politicians and the people they lead too often ignore danger signs until a crisis hits. It wasn't a secret that levees

Most Scientific Papers are Probably Wrong by Kurt Kleiner ...John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, says that small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research findings false. But even large, well-designed studies are not always right, meaning that scientists and

Strategic Reserves -- No Strategy by Alan Reynolds ...Since November 2001, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has been increased by 108 million barrels and is now up to 700 million barrels. Those extra 108 million barrels were imported, or had to be replaced with imports, making the SPR a price-support program for oil producers...New reports quote interested parties who offer the following

Hurricane Katrina: A Republican Conspiracy? by Michael Reagan By now you’ve probably heard about the lunatic comments of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Cindy Sheehan of the environmental movement, who blamed Hurricane Katrina on President Bush and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour for not buying into the global warming hype, and not signing up for the thoroughly discredited Kyoto Treaty...In a 2001

The Elite Doesn't Understand the South by Matt Towery We are the growth of America and its future. But it took days for the nation as a whole to even tip its hat to a natural disaster that has the potential to drag America into a full-blown recession. I'm American before all else. I'm proud of every part and each person in the United States. Like Frank Sinatra, I love New York. I travel to Los

After the Storm by Peggy Noonan Katrina is a huge and historic story. The human cost, the financial cost, the rendering uninhabitable of a great and fabled American city--all of it amazing. A quick look at the good, the bad, and the let's-shoot-them-now...

Storms Vary With Cycles, Experts Say by Kenneth Chang Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming. But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much

Study: Terrorists Exploit Immigration Laws by Lara Jakes Jordan ...The report provides newly compiled data on U.S. terror arrests to illustrate gaps in the nation's border security, visa approval and immigration systems... Full Report

Jihadism's Roots in Political Islam by Bassam Tibi ...It is wrong and even deceitful to argue that jihadism has nothing to do with Islam, because the jihadists believe that they are acting as "true Islamic believers" and learn the Islamist mind-set in mosques and Islamic schools, including those of the Islamic diaspora in Europe...

Who Is Hugo Chavez? The New York Sun ...None of this amounts to justification for the American government to assassinate Mr. Chavez, though we certainly wouldn't shed any tears if he were removed from power by some resourceful Venezuelans. But the contrast between the left's loud fuss over Rev. Robertson's comments and their silence about Mr. Chavez's actions signals that whatever its motivation,

Real Reform At Last Investor's Business Daily ...Bolton has occupied his Turtle Bay office just a few weeks and already he's tipped over Kofi Annan's bureaucratic apple cart. The secretary general had scheduled a Sept. 14 summit for the heads of 175 nations. The agenda? Ratifying the 2000 Millennium Summit, which put the U.N. squarely in the business of not just arbitrating global conflicts but

New Constitution has Something for Everyone by Mark Steyn ...To be sure, we shouldda done this, and we shouldda done that. Yet nonetheless Iraq advances day by day. The real quagmire is at home, where the kinkily gleeful relish of defeatism manifested by Cindy Sheehan, Joan Baez, Ted Kennedy et al. bears less and less relationship to anything happening over there...

Immigration Problem Needs an Attrition Policy by Mark Krikorian Those who can, do. Those who won't, declare a state of emergency. After years of welcoming illegal immigration, Govs. Janet Napolitano and Bill Richardson now see a political tsunami gaining force and are heading for higher ground...a clever political tactic nonetheless, allowing officials to appear responsive to public concerns over

The Geopolitics of Katrina Strategic Forecasting ...The Port of Southern Louisiana is a river port. It depends on the navigability of the Mississippi River. The Mississippi is notorious for changing its course, and in southern Louisiana -- indeed along much of its length -- levees both protect the land from its water and maintain its course and navigability. Dredging and other maintenance are

A War to Be Proud Of by Christopher Hitchens ..."Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad." I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it...If the great effort to remake Iraq

Iraq: Where Socialists and Anarchists Join in with Racialists and Paleocons by Victor Davis Hanson ...both, in their exasperation at George Bush's insistence on seeing Iraq emerge from the Hussein nightmare years with some sort of constitutional government, have embraced the paranoid style of personal invective. They employ half-truths and spin conspiracy theories to argue that the war was unjust,

Dems Can Make Inroads on Immigration Issue by Froma Harrop President Bush should know he's not doing us any favors by offering to enforce the nation's immigration laws. It's already his job. Yet that's the deal in his new guest-worker proposal: Keep the cheap labor flowing to business, and maybe I'll start going after employers who hire illegal aliens. This mindset is making Americans crazy, and

Worry About the Fed, Not Oil by Lawrence Kudlow ...Right now, stable commodities (excluding energy), low bond rates, and a steady dollar are signaling low inflation and moderate economic growth. But Greenspan’s neglect of the commodity-price-rule approach to policy makes one wonder if he is turning a blind eye to the message of the markets. After all we have learned about the failure of central

US Heading for House Price Crash, Greenspan Tells Buyers by Graham Searjeant Wall Streer shuddered yesterday after Alan Greenspan, the United States’ central banker, warned American homebuyers that they risk a crash if they continue to drive property prices higher. He said that the US house-price spiral had become an economic imbalance, threatening stability like the country’s trade gap or its